The ability to evaluate information effectively is accepted as a key to success. With the advent of the computing system and the Internet, the amount of available information has increased dramatically. For example, any human being with access to a computing system and a Web browser has access to an almost unlimited amount of information. This can result in “information overload”, making it difficult to filter through the available data to identify helpful data, and interpret such data.
Sometimes, data may be represented in hierarchical form, in which each node in a hierarchical tree represents a particular item of data. Other data is not available in hierarchical form such as flat lists and charts. In some cases, such non-hierarchical data may be better interpreted in non-hierarchical form. Thus, some data is hierarchical, and some data is not.
When represented in hierarchical form, each node in the hierarchical tree is related to connected nodes in a particular way. Such hierarchical trees are sometimes helpful for evaluating certain types of data, and are thus widely used in computing systems and online services. For instances, directories and files are organized hierarchically in a file system to allow users to organize files according to a particular relationship so that the files may be more easily found. Family history charts are organized hierarchically so that the familial relationships of individuals may be quickly ascertained. Social networking sites have hierarchical organizations in which an individual may have lists, and in which lists may contain friends of the individual.